USA Broadcasting oversight CORRUPTED by CORPORATES

Media ownership study ordered destroyed

FCC draft suggested fewer owners would hurt local TV coverage

Sept. 14, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to
destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration
of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at
the agency says.

The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation
hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report "indirectly
from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made
public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

(Note: In June of 2006, the FCC announced the start of a new review of
media ownership,
http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/
including a "series of public hearings on media ownership issues
http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/hearings.html
at diverse locations across the nation". That review is still ongoing.)

'Every last piece' destroyed

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said
senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the
report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of
discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at
the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its
authors, he said.

In a letter sent to Martin Wednesday, Boxer said she was "dismayed that
this report, which was done at taxpayer expense more than two years ago,
and which concluded that localism is beneficial to the public, was shoved
in a drawer."

Martin said he was not aware of the existence of the report, nor was his
staff. His office indicated it had not received Boxer's letter as of
midafternoon Thursday.

Local ownership benefits

In the letter, Boxer asked whether any other commissioners "past or
present" knew of the report's existence and why it was never made public.
She also asked whether it was "shelved because the outcome was not to the
liking of some of the commissioners and/or any outside powerful interests?"

The report, written by two economists in the FCC's Media Bureau, analyzed
a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998. The
broadcasts were obtained from Danilo Yanich, a professor and researcher at
the University of Delaware, and were originally gathered by the Pew
Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The analysis showed local ownership of television stations adds almost
five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three
minutes of "on-location" news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC
arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television
stations a company could own in a single market. It was part of a broader
decision liberalizing ownership rules.

Community responsiveness

At that time, the agency pointed to evidence that "commonly owned
television stations are more likely to carry local news than other
stations."

When considering whether to loosen rules on media ownership, the agency is
required to examine the impact on localism, competition and diversity. The
FCC generally defines localism as the level of responsiveness of a station
to the needs of its community.

The 2003 action sparked a backlash among the public and within Congress.
In June 2004, a federal appeals court rejected the agency's reasoning on
most of the rules and ordered it to try again. The debate has since been
reopened, and the FCC has scheduled a public hearing on the matter in Los
Angeles on Oct. 3.

The report was begun after then-Chairman Michael Powell ordered the
creation of a task force to study localism in broadcasting in August of
2003. Powell stepped down

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6852019/

from the commission and was replaced by Martin in March 2005. Powell did
not return a call seeking comment.

The authors of the report, Keith Brown and Peter Alexander, both declined
to comment. Brown has left public service while Alexander is still at the
FCC. Yanich confirmed the two men were the authors. Both have written
extensively on media and telecommunications policy.

Yanich said the report was "extremely well done. It should have helped to
inform policy."

Boxer's office said if she does not receive adequate answers to her
questions, she will push for an investigation by the FCC inspector general.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/